Due to a problem with Electronic Voting Machines in Los Angeles County, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was told he had already voted when he showed up at the polls today to cast his ballot in the Special Election that he himself declared for California today!

He was told he'd have to use a provisional ballot, but unlike most American voters, he was eventually allowed to use a regular ballot anyway.

Los Angeles County Registrar, Conny McCormack (a huge fan of Diebold machines, and a very good friend of their sales rep here in Southern California) is trying to mitigate the damage...big time...Though she admits that someone "breached protocol in advance of the election"

It should be further noted, that the Governator was attempting to vote in Brentwood (in Los Angeles County), but the "breach" --- which would have kept a normal non-Gubernatorial citizen from voting on anything but a provisional ballot --- occurred in Pasadena, about a 30 to 45 minute drive from Brentwood. Early voting, on paperless Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machines, has been occurring in Los Angles County for the last several weeks.

SACRAMENTO --- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up to his Brentwood neighborhood polling station today to cast his ballot in the special election --- and was told he had already voted.

Elections officials said a Los Angeles County poll worker had entered Schwarzenegger's name into an electronic voting touch screen station in Pasadena on Oct. 25. The worker, who was not identified, was testing the voting machine in preparation for early voting that began the next day.
...
Schwarzenegger's aides were informed of the problem when they arrived this morning to survey the governor's polling station. The poll worker told the governor's staff he would have to use a "provisional" ballot that allows elections workers to verify if two votes were made by the same person. McCormack said the poll worker did the correct thing.

The governor, however, was allowed to use a regular ballot.
..."This is someone who breached our protocol and was playing around in advance of the election," she said.

CORRECTION: The original version of this article had said that Schwarzenegger had voted in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger had, in fact, voted at his Brentwood precinct, which is in Los Angeles County. The BRAD BLOG regrets the error.

You would THINK that this voting problem would make Republicans change their mind on electronic voting machines, but it will only make the Republicans double check their work in insuring that the hacking works only FOR them and not against them.

I believe there may be some serious problems going on with the election process in Los Angeles County. I live within the City of LA in a minority neighborhood that I imagine is mostly Democrat, and for the last three elections we have not had a polling place because "there are less than 250 registered voters in our precinct". We are forced to vote by mail, which doesn't leave me confident that my vote is even counted.

It is an outrage that even one vote is mishandled. It is obvious that something is indeed very wrong with the way we vote in this country. If we do not have a secure voting method, we do not have a democracy. It is very troubling that 2 Companies control 80% of the voting/counting machines in this country and that they are headed by 2 right-wing Rebublican brothers--Diebold and ES&S. IT IS TIME FOR THIS TO STOP ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. THESE ARE NOT "DIRTY TRICKS" BUT FELONIES AND NEED TO BE PROSECUTED...

It's obvious what happened. Some intrepid programmer (and likely an election reform patriot) hacked into the machines to deliberately embarrass Schwarzenegger and point out just how fucked up and easily corruptible these Diebold machines are.

Not to say we didn't see it coming. Thanks for all your hard work Brad, et al... in keeping this voting issue out in front of everyones eyes. Some how we need to get Cafferty on CNN on it right now. I will email him, but let's get all of us to do it. LOTS of people will be watching tonight.

I suspect you're right, Jim. That's not exactly fair, but compared to what the Republicans have done in the last two elections, it's a pittance, because Arnold's vote was counted in the end. Wonder who Maria voted for?

The question remains, "Will there be an honest election anywhere in the country today?" I have a sinking feeling that Democrats will lose all the close elections by a margin of 51%-48%. If I'm wrong, maybe we've turned the corner at last.

How or why a glitch in these electronic machines surprises anyone is beyond me.....there are problems like this in each and every election! I have voted by absentee ballot the last few times (due to incompetent management of my local, ever-moving polling place) and each time, I wonder if my vote will actually be counted. With voter confidence at rock bottom, is it any wonder turnouts are usually low? A basic American RIGHT (voting) seems to get more difficult with each election...it's a wonder anyone bothers.

GEORGIA A COMPLETE DIEBOLD FIASCO as usual...
saw the local news today, Sandy Springs and Dekalb both reporting the usual problem with a person picking candidate A and Diebold choosing candidate B (so much so our local news did a story on it!!!).

My other problems voting today:
Called The Secretary of State's 800 hotline 888.265.1115 typed in my social security # to verify my polling place and it just hung up on me. Then I called in a 2nd time to register a complaint and they make you jump thru this hoop of getting a HAVA complaint form and mailing it (perhaps could they just accept you saying your complaint on a voicemail!!!!, no that would be too friggin easy).

BOTTOM LINE FOLKS our elections are more screwed now than ever. One more day of electronic voting and I'm going to have to just move to another more democratic country. because in America, the sad fact is we have outsourced our elections to Diebold and other vendors. My own polling location is a Publix Grocery Store.. and the manager had to be found to tell me there was not voting my precinct today (where else was I going to find out if I voted today or not, not the newspaper, not anywhere else).... so the story goes... incompetence, complication, greed makes our voting a mere sham of a process.

i'm going to file a HAVA complaint. but I"m almost quite sure I know it will end up where all my open records requests in GA have landed... in the 'who gives a shit' bin....

YIKES... even arny not being able to vote and americans remain apathetic that their country is lost beyond any chance of being saved... without saving our elections.... so crucial this issue.. enough ranting....

So the elections are rigged for the Republicans and their initiatives to win and the progressives (don't think for a moment I would bunch Democrats in that group) to lose.

This is news?

Wake up sheeple, you've been had and it started way back in 1998 with Hagel. It's too late now. We can't "vote" our way out of this. It won't change until a few select members of Republican-dominated election boards are "Soprano"ed. Then, I guess the flunkies that are happy to steal elections for their leaders when there is no risk will have to decide if it's worth it. Many "true believers" still will, but many will jump ship in the interests of self-preservation, just as the Cheney aides turned on their boss when they thought their hides were on the line.

This won't end until there is a river of blood in the streets. Democracy is dead.

Sometime things have to get worse before they get better! Everyone needs to write their congressmen and tell them to s**tcan the machines and go with paper ballots AND non-partisan counters. Maybe when enough people care about their vote, things will change!

I voted today in California. My ballot was a piece of paper where I filled in bubbles, then I went over and fed the paper into a (GULP) Diebold voting machine.

As I fed the paper into the machine, it dawned on me like never before, that these machines have far too much power in this country. Suddenly, I realized like never before that, this could all be one big elaborate ruse.

How do I know my ballot was counted? How do I know? I have no idea. Yes, the old lady by the machine encouraged me that "my ballot would be counted", but who the heck was she? At least there is a written record of my vote though. I can only imagine what it's like to vote on a tocuh screen machine. FUCK!!!

I wonder what legal protocol Connie used to allow the Governator to vote using a regular ballot? How precisely did she do that? How did she know that no vote was already cast by the one who was Schwarzenegger on Oct 25? This would be very interesting to investigate, eh, Brad?

ALL VOTES CAST IN THIS SPECIAL ELECTION GO THROUGH DIEBOLD TABULATORS eventually. There is NO advantage to Inka-vote or optical or punchcard or ABSENTEE or any of the other voting systems in use in California.

Governor Vote-Fraud, committing an act of vote fraud on the $50 million election he scheduled to pay back some of the SIXTY SEVEN MILLION he has taken in special interest funding.

"When you take special interest money, you owe those people something." --- A. Schwarzenegger, 2003, pledging that if elected, he would not take any special interest money. "I don't need it --- I'm rich."

"a "provisional" ballot ... allows elections workers to verify if two votes were made by the same person."

SEMI-FALSE. Provisional ballots usually aren't ever counted. Only if the vote difference between the winner and loser is smaller than the total number of provisionals (this rarely happens) are they counted, and even then only counted up to the point that the remaining provisionals are fewer than the margin.

COMMENT #28 [Permalink]...
Pissed Off American
said on 11/8/2005 @ 5:31 pm PT...

Well, I went down to vote with my girlfriend. Precinct #113, in Kern County, California. The Diebold scanner seemingly accepted my ballot OK, but when my GF's ballot was handed to the "operator", she first tried to insert the ballot upside down, at which point the little window said jammed. The volunteer, getting down on her knees, opened a panel on the back of the machine, and stuck her arm in the machine, doing who knows what, with the comment, "Oh, these electronics, once in while you need to coax them along". At that point one of volunteers removed the book, (I am not kidding), that the machine was leveled with, and commenced to SHAKE THE SHIT out of the damned thing. Well, it didn't work. At this point, two more volunteers were called in to assist with the "technical adjustment", and ALL THREE of the gal volunteers SHOOK THE SHIT out of the machine. (Gads, this sounds like a Seinfeld episode, but I swear, its the truth) The machine stubbornly rejected the tender administrations of the three volunteers, so a six foot self proffessed "engineer" in line behind my GF offered his expertise. Apparently, his touch was EXACTLY what was needed, as the four of them, vigorously shaking the machine, were able to coax the machine into accepting my GF's ballot.

Medium [head is]Right[up his ass].. I don't get why you are SO worried about "misleading headlines".. perhaps you know that entirely too many people are too lazy to read the entire article so they skim headlines and take it as fact.. and now your neoCon/sleezy way to "educate the masses" (with misleading or FALSE headlines) is in jeapordy? Are too many wing-nuts starting to wake up because of "misleading headlines", even though they still don't know any facts?

Poor baby.. I guess it's time everyone started READING the ARTICLES... eh?

Once again ... another DieBold electronic voting machine issue rears its ugly head.

On a related note, I recently read several documents on theOhio Secretary Of State website, showing that DieBold's GEMS / MS Access database security issue was known by Kenneth Blackwell as far back as Nov 2003.

"GEMS uses the MS Access database to store ballot definition data and election results. There is a risk that an unauthorized person with access to the GEMS server can access the database and CHANGE BALLOT DEFINITION FILES and ELECTION RESULTS."

For this SECURITY ISSUE:
Risk Likelihood is HIGH
Impact Rating is HIGH
Risk Level is HIGH

These documents appear to be an Ohio Election System review conducted by Compuware Corporation for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.

The documents recommended that the Secretary of State TAKE ACTION TO CORRECT THE PROBLEMS.

IT APPEARS THAT ACTION WAS NOT TAKEN UNTIL AFTER THE 2004 ELECTION, as a fix for the the GEMS/Access Database SECURITY ISSUE wasn't mentioned until the Jan 26, 2005 document, when it talked about using a program called "Digital Guardian" to correct the problem.

...and wait! Don't tell me! All the glitches where a voter voted for candidate A and candidate B came up, candidate B was the Republican, right? It was hundreds-of-millions-to-1 that all the glitches favored one party in the 2004 election, according to college & university statisticians. Now, compound those odds with election-after-election, the glitches still favoring 1 party. It's ridiculous. Clint Curtis have any comments? Why doesn't some vigilante group just start going around blowing up or stealing all the electronic voting machines? Or why don't the Dems start hacking into them? How come it's legal that elections are being stolen, but if some group took some action, that would be illegal?

[Does this ring a bell?] ... In many stories about voting machine glitches that [Bev] Harris found, no follow-up news stories explained what went wrong with the machines. Where explanations did occur, officials blamed poll-worker error or "minor programming flaws," with the caveat that the glitches didn't affect the outcome of the election, making them irrelevant. [Yea, right.]

Election officials, most of whom have no technical background, relied on the vendors' claims that their systems were fine. In many cases, it was usually the vendor who stepped in to fix the machines and provide an explanation to feed reporters. The situation highlighted a concern among critics that election officials had become increasingly dependent on voting companies to run their elections.

**Companies who have an allegience to one of the political parties --- I'm not saying which one.**

The other thing that is ethically WRONG is the fact that these companies hire former state employees as their lobbyists. I don't know if anybody has a complete list --- I haven't found one, but I think this is very important. If anybody know where I might find a complete list, I'd be grateful for the info! Thx, Kira

Ok --- from the same link, above:

...In fact, the relationship between vendors and election officials has raised questions about conflicts of interest around the country. Manufacturers vying for million-dollar contracts have sponsored national and state conferences for election officials and courted some officials with expensive meals, cruises and tickets to concerts and sporting events, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation. They also hire former state employees to ease their way through contract negotiations and certification processes.

For example, after she left office, former Florida Secretary of State Sandra Mortham, a one-time running mate of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, became a lobbyist for both ES&S and the Florida Association of Counties. During that time, the association signed an exclusive endorsement deal with ES&S to earn a commission on any contracts that counties signed with the voting company. Karen Marcus, the association's president when the deal was signed, said Mortham didn't broker the partnership, nor did the association pressure counties to purchase ES&S machines.

In California, where counties are under court order to replace punch-card machines and will likely spend $400 million on new equipment, former Secretary of State Bill Jones praised the virtues of touch-screen voting while in office in 2001, sponsoring a $200 million bond measure to help counties purchase new e-voting machines. Support for the bill, which passed in 2002, was financed by Sequoia and ES&S. Jones became a consultant for Sequoia after leaving office and is now a GOP Senate candidate.

Lou Dedier, who once supervised the certification process for voting systems in California, prompted an ethics investigation when he participated in certification discussions for a competing company after accepting a job with ES&S. In a company press release announcing his new job, Dedier called ES&S machines "by far the best elections systems" he had ever seen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From GA (home of Cathy Diebold Cox) - Democrat Lewis Massey (son of a 38-yr. GA Capitol lobbyist) was chosen by Governor Zell Miller to run for SOS in '96, and Massey won the election.

Massey hired Cathy Cox as Assistant SOS. Cox was elected SOS of GA in 1999. The day after Massey left office as Secretary of State in 1999, he took a job with Diebold to be their lobbyist. Hellooooo!!! GA now has Diebold Machines 100% across the state. Count the Votes .org has a good write-up about Georgia's Cathy Diebold Cox HERE. The whole article is a horror story.

With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.

O'Dell said he "wanted to reframe some of the issues," Andrew said.

His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken.

.... Andrew said computer scientists and e-voting activists are standing in the way of a promising technology, an ATM-like voting computer with such a low error rate that more votes count. And that, said Andrew, should work to the benefit of Democrats.

The tour pairs Andrew with former Republican congressional aide Melissa McKay, now working for the public-relations firm, Ogilvy PR. But California and its Democrats were clearly Andrew's show.

**MORE** at link above.

I haven't researched Joe Andrew. Wonder what we'll eventually find?????

[snip] Joseph J. Andrew (Joe) is a member of the Advisory Board of the New Democrat Network, a corporate lawyer and PR consultant. In addition, he published a spy novel, titled "The Disciples." [snip] **MORE** at link above.

What's the New Democrat Network????

Another spy novelist? I wonder how these frightfully busy congresspersons find time to write cheesy novels.

WE ARE SUPPOSED TO GET ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES IN ERIE PA., I DON'T THINK THAT IT IS A GOOD IDEA THE ONES WE HAVE ARE FINE AND THERE HAS BEEN NO PROBLEMS WITH THE VOTING MACHINES WE HAVE NOW THIS IS A WAST OF TAX PAYER MONEY, WE DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE FLORIDA WHERE THEY WERE FIXED FOR THE BUSH KERRY ELECTION, I REALY BELIEVE THIS HAPPENRD IN FLORIDA AND OHIO. THEY SHOUD HAVE SOME DOWN AT THE ERIE PA. LIBRARY FOR PEOPLE TO TRY AND SEE BEFOR THEY ARE BOUGHT AND HAVE A VOTE ON WHICH ONE'S ARE BEST YOU KNOW THE TWO COMPANYS THAT HAVE THEM ARE RUN BY REPUBLICANS WHICH IS NOT RIGHT, I DON'T TRUST THEM.
GARY M. FREIWALD ERIE PA.

"Democrats cleaned up big in off-year elections from New Jersey to California, sinking the candidate who embraced President Bush in the final days of the Virginia governor's campaign. They also turned back all four of GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to reshape state government. " (link here).

The neocons do not control the voting machines in California. In a resounding defeat for Arnold, voters rejected the entire special election. All eight propositions were defeated (as requested in my letter to the LA Times - 10/29/05) including the four that the governor's team wrote. This is a huge victory for teachers, nurses, firemen, unions, and progressives in the state.

Blackwell and Diebold get any election result they want in Ohio. Bob Taft should be in jail. $300 million missing from the workers' comp fund, and no action taken? Taft gets a couple misdemeanors over golf outings? Huh? The Plain Dealer is the worst newspaper of all time, space, and dimension. The head of the editorial page praised Taft and Conrad saying how they had unquestioned integrity. He didn't say why this was true. Then he said the democrats ( who had NOTHING to do with the missing money) had breathtaking incompetence and should never be in charge of anything.

Awnald had already voted but he was crass enough to try to vote again ... and on TV even???

I guess he is getting as brazen as Bush, Snottie, Scooter, and Cheney. Power does that.

Well, guess what, they are all going down no matter how many political steroids (cover ups, lies, subject switching, minutia fondling) they continue to take. These political steroids they have been taking have damaged their brains.

As evidence I submit the text of the trollogy that has played out here on Brad Blog.

The trolls here are so bad and now they are gonna cry in their political steriod laced budweiser.

Medium Right said...
"It didnt keep him from voting, your headline is mis-leading. But then when the truth isnt on your side, you need to mislead."

The headline wasn't misleading dumba**. It said Ahnold was DENIED not that he didn't VOTE. He, in fact, was denied. An illegal situation took place to change that, but it doesn't change the fact that he had been denied. Your comment is misleading.

Read this article No Doctored DRE which appeared in the WSJ. It's obvious to me that Andrew has gone to the other side along with the other former state employees who now lobby for Diebold. Money talks, y'know. Read his words as quoted in the article - they're right out of the Newt Gingrich RNC talking points.

Andrew has either swallowed the Diebold marketing lies hook, line and sinker - or he has chosen to join the marketing scam for mega-bucks.

The right-wingnuts continue in their attempts to slash already floundering budgets for education. Ahnold with his proposition 76 and bushitler with his huge budget cuts for education and other domestic programs.

ONLY MO-RONS would do this.

Anybody who has a brain (and uses it) knows that providing our young people (and older folks who choose to continue their education) with excellent education (which takes money --- *hint*hint*) will bolster this country economically.

A higher level of education will elevate the intelligence quotient and strengthen us from within in ways that are extraordinarily important to our stability as a country in the future.

A higher level of education will give us better quality in healthcare and research.

Again --- what's wrong with the right-wingnuts? What's eating their brains? The Kool-aid?

brad, i thought diebold was banned in california, you had an article that there was a 20% error rate...was that just one county? i thought it was all of california

It was all of CA. But it was for the Diebold Accuvote TSx machines, Diebold's primary DRE voting machine. But Diebold's voter registration software (DIMS) and central tabulators (GEMS) are both in use in the state. And Diebold, in the meantime, is trying to upgrade their Accuvote to get another shot at CA, which Republican SoS McPhereson seems to be allowing them.

The kind of people who want Arnie to win, are people who like bullies, if they like bullies so much, why don;t they have a fight with a walrus, rather than let decent people get ruled by people who admit they were bullies and thugs